Want to know what the odds are you'll survive two atomic bombs? How about more specific odds about yourself? The new Web site "Book of Odds" allows you to get up and personal about your own statistics. Bob Moon talks to founder Amram Shapiro.

Note, though, that while historical statistics can be suggestive of future events, they are not the odds that some future event will or will not happen.

American Public Media's Marketplace explains how, following the lead of a New Zealand dairy farmer who moved to Missouri because he wanted to let his dairy cattle graze on inexpensive farmland, the Missouri dairy community is changing the way they feed and raise their cows.

A nice note from my mother arrived in the mail today. I'm lucky: I have a mom that still goes to the trouble to write notes to me by hand, rather than email. I treasure each one.

In most notes she sends along clippings of articles she has run across that she thinks will interest me. She is a voracious reader--of everything. In today's envelope, along with a very nice note and another clipping, I found a letter to the editor she'd snipped from the Star Press of Muncie, Indiana.

Moms know their sons, don't they? If you have any doubt, check out the letter:

No free lunch

JIM ARNOLD • Muncie • October 4, 2009

It was early in my student career at BSU [Ball State] when I enrolled in Econ 101. The first day of class, our long-haired economics professor strolled confidently into the classroom and inscribed TANSTAAFL on the chalk board. TANSTAAFL, he claimed, was the fundamental theory of economics.

Being a little wet behind the ears, I fell for his spiel hook, line and sinker. I pondered the language of origin of this odd sounding word . . . .

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Though it predates the financial crises of 2008-09, this video from the Fed, hosted by Charles Osgood, is still one of the best video summaries available of the tools and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System.

I still don't know why it has that animated eagle, though. Keep an eye out for it:

The economics award is usually the last of the Nobel prizes to be announced. Correctly so, for it was also the last to be created – and strictly speaking is not even a real Nobel prize. The five original awards, first given out in 1901 for literature, peace, medicine/physiology, physics and chemistry, were intended by Alfred Nobel to recognise contributions that enhanced the quality of human life, through scientific advance, literary creativity or efforts at bringing about peace.

The economics prize is not a prize of the Nobel Foundation; rather, it was created in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden as a "prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel". However, it now has the same procedure of selection by the Swedish Academy, and the same cash award presented at a similar ceremony as the Nobel prizes.

There have been recurrent doubts about whether it conforms to the basic goals of the prizes as envisaged by the founder. Is economics a science, on the same lines as physics or chemistry? Does it unambiguously contribute to human wellbeing, like peace or literature? In any case, should economics be privileged over other branches of learning?